


Push and Pull

by draculard



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Battle of the Mustaches, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Get thirsty for Gideon you swines, Handcuffs, Hate Sex, Humor, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, References To Canon Suicide Attempt, Sharing a Bed, Why is this the first Din/Gideon fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28223289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Turning away, Gideon says off-hand, “Or perhaps you’ll hang onto me long enough to delude yourself into thinking we have some sort of bond, like you did with that little big-eared bastard.”Din rankles so viciously at this that it must be visible beneath his armor. He can’t stop his voice from coming out hard and clipped.“I wouldn’t count on it,” he says, and he gives Gideon a shove toward the nearest hotel.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Moff Gideon
Comments: 16
Kudos: 52





	Push and Pull

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr, I'm draculard there too

It’s his prisoner, so that makes it his bounty. The problem is he doesn’t have a ship, and despite his best efforts to surrender the Darksaber, Bo-Katan doesn’t seem willing to share. Part of him — the cynical side — had hoped maybe at least his long goodbye with Grogu would win him some sympathy points, but when the Mandalorians drop him off on the nearest orbital station, he has to admit that isn’t the case.

Correction: drop _him_ off, yeah, and drop off Moff Gideon, too. Maybe they aren’t willing to give him a ride, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stoop low enough to steal his bounty.

Small comfort.

Din turns his helmet, looks sideways at Gideon. Gideon arches one eyebrow back at him, his hands cuffed and his shoulders straight. There’s a dark bruise forming over his eye and cheekbone where he was struck, and a burn beneath his jaw where the hot barrel of his blaster touched his skin.

“Well?” Gideon says, his voice a drawl.

Din says nothing.

“I’m assuming you have a plan,” Gideon continues. There’s a faint hint of sarcasm to his tone, but maybe that’s just how he talks. With both hands, he gestures at the inhospitable-looking crowd around them. “That helmet of yours would make a fair beggar’s bucket — unless you have some other way to procure a ship in mind?”

“I could collect that bounty,” says Din levelly.

The look Gideon gives him is unimpressed — almost amused, in fact. But it’s not entirely an empty threat. There may not be much of a New Republic presence on this station, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of interested buyers. He sees passersby sneaking looks at Gideon, taking note of his Imperial gear, his injuries, the cuffs around his wrists, perhaps mentally cataloging his face. 

“The type of man who trades an Imperial prisoner for transport is the same type of man who kills a Moff once he’s bested him in battle,” says Gideon, his pronunciation crisp, his voice detached. “You are not that man, Mandalorian.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think,” says Din. He twitches his arm at the same moment a menacing-looking Rodian walks by, feinting like he might catch the guy’s attention and broker a deal right there. In reality, he’s just watching to see if Gideon flinches.

He doesn’t.

“And a true bounty hunter would have either killed me or sold me off by now. _You—_ ” For the first time since Bo-Katan kicked them off her ship, Gideon turns to face Din fully. “—will no doubt hang onto me until you find an authority you deem righteous enough to take me off your hands.”

Silence stretches between them. Somehow, Gideon knows exactly how to look at Din’s helmet so that he's staring right into his eyes. Gideon’s face is unreadable, his gaze far away and seeming almost dead. When he finally makes an expression — a facial shrug — it almost startles Din to see it.

Turning away, Gideon says off-hand, “Or perhaps you’ll hang onto me long enough to delude yourself into thinking we have some sort of bond, like you did with that little big-eared bastard.”

Din rankles so viciously at this that it _must_ be visible beneath his armor. He can’t stop his voice from coming out hard and clipped.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he says, and he gives Gideon a shove toward the nearest hotel.

* * *

The hotel is cramped and dingy, but even so, Din has to rifle through Gideon’s pockets in order to afford it. He tries to pretend it’s totally normal to stand behind Gideon and press his chest against his back, Gideon’s body heat warming beskar steel, as he roots around for spare change. Imperial credits won’t buy him much here, but luckily it turns out Gideon is a practical man, and the coins in his pocket (against the warm hard muscle of his thigh, oh fuck what did Din’s hand just brush, was that his _dick_?) are government-neutral ingots with a Muunilinst stamp of value in the middle. 

“Ah, got it,” he says to the bored-looking Ugnaught receptionist. As he steps around Gideon with the coins in his palm, he has to pretend not to see the raised eyebrow Gideon throws his way. “How many nights will this buy us?”

He hears a low scoff and a mutter from Gideon that sounds like, “Who taught you how to haggle?” The receptionist looks down at the ingots in Din’s open hand. 

“Six nights,” he grunts. “Room and board, two meals a day in the downstairs dining hall. No alcohol.”

Din can hardly believe his luck, until the Ugnaught sweeps his eye over Gideon and adds,

“Only one bed.”

Din’s heart spirals down to his feet. He turns and looks at Gideon, who somehow seems to sense that beneath Din’s helmet, he’s leveling an accusatory glare. Gideon squares his shoulders and gives Din a disdainful look in return.

“Won’t find a better price in all of Kanymid,” the Ugnaught warns him. Looking around the seedy hotel — worse on the inside than it was on the outside, which is really saying something — Din supposes he’s probably right. 

“We’ll take the room,” he says, resigned. To Gideon, “Six days will buy me enough time to secure more funds.”

As he exchanges money with the Ugnaught for an antiquated key card, he hears Gideon hiss behind him, obviously exasperated. Only when they set off down the hall in search of their room does Gideon crowd up behind Din, cuffed hands clinking off Din’s armor, and whisper, “Seriously, Mandalorian? Who taught you how to haggle?”

“Nobody,” says Din stoically. “Haggling is against my creed.”

“What else is against your creed?” Gideon says. “Economics? Basic mathematics? Reading and writing?” After a pause, he adds, “ _Childcare_? Because I’ve seen the way you handle firefights when that kid is around, and it’s _appalling_.”

 _Gideon_ is going to lecture _him_ about childcare?

“You held the Darksaber to his throat,” Din hisses.

“Oh, please,” says Gideon — the bastard even has the audacity to roll his eyes, as if this is nothing. “He’s been playing with kyber crystals for longer than you’ve been alive. It’s _enrichment_. Haven’t you ever owned a pet before?”

Din swipes the key card for their room, too angry to speak. Inside, the bed — big enough for a Gamorrean, but only just — takes up almost all of the floor space, leaving no room for the usual hotel amenities, like a desk or a chair. The sign outside the hotel boasted of real water baths, but when Din checks out the shower, he doesn’t even see a faucet — just the standard shipboard sonic, in the cheapest possible model. 

A creak of boxsprings diverts his attention. He turns to see Gideon sitting on the edge of the bed, making himself comfortable. He glances out the grimy window at the night sky, dotted with lights from around the orbital station. 

“These air recyclers have gone stale,” Gideon says, wrinkling his nose. “I smell mold.”

“You’ll live,” says Din shortly. He doesn’t like that Gideon has claimed a spot on the bed, or that he’s sitting back now with his head on the pillow and his hands resting on his stomach, looking for all the world like he belongs here. From this angle, though, the burn on the underside of his jaw is fully visible, and that tempers Din’s — well, temper — with uneasiness.

When those Imperial pilots had killed themselves at Gideon’s command, it had only solidified his view of Gideon — heartless, cruel, the Empire personified. Knowing that, in the same situation, Gideon would try to kill himself rather than divulge Imperial secrets changed things. Not much, but a little — enough that Din couldn’t ignore it, much as he tried.

What did Gideon see in the Empire that made him so willing to sacrifice his own life? What went wrong inside someone’s head to make them so quick to turn the blaster—

“I can tell you’re staring at me, you know,” says Gideon with so much smugness that Din’s last few seconds of generous speculation are immediately erased. 

“You’re sleeping on the floor,” he says.

Gideon doesn’t take the threat seriously in the slightest; if anything, he seems to relax further. “You sleep on the floor,” he says, eyes sliding closed. “I’m sure you sleep in that ridiculous armor anyway, so what difference does it make?”

Temper flashing, Din grabs Gideon by the ankles and bodily hauls him to the far side of the bed, stopping short of pushing him to the floor — but only because, much as he’d _like_ to force Gideon to sleep there, there really isn’t room. Gideon makes a little disgruntled noise as he’s moved, but doesn’t open his eyes and seems to settle right back in.

“I prefer this side of the bed anyway,” he murmured. Then, cracking one eye open to peek at Din, he adds, “Do you sleep with that god-awful contraption on your head?”

The answer is no. But that answer is conditional, and the condition is that he takes the helmet off to sleep only when he’s alone. This whole scenario — sharing a bed with a captured bounty, with an _enemy_ — is something Din’s creed doesn’t cover. He wars with himself over what to do, what to say, and the whole time Gideon stares at him, his gaze absolutely dripping with boredom and disdain.

When the silence stretches on, Gideon says, “Look, I’m flattered by your interest, but I assure you it doesn’t go both ways. I saw that hideous excuse for a mustache you’ve got. If you want to keep the mask on, be my guest.”

With an irritated snap of the wrist, Din unseals his helmet and wrenches it off his head. He realizes a second later, when there’s a flash of satisfaction in Gideon’s eyes, that he may have been manipulated slightly.

 ~~A lot~~. 

Too late now. More disgruntled than ever, he tosses the helmet aside and smooths his mussed hair. He’s halfway through removing his armor when he glances at Gideon, who’s blatantly watching him and making insulting, judgmental expressions every time a new body part is revealed.

“Well?” Din snaps. 

Gideon raises an eyebrow.

“You gonna sleep in that?” Din asks, nodding to Gideon’s unifo— er, armor? — his bizarre Darth Vader suit. “Doesn’t seem comfortable.”

“More comfortable than beskar,” Gideon says.

“I’m taking off my beskar,” Din points out, balancing on one leg to remove his shin guard.

Gideon mutely raises his cuffed hands. Din stares at them, suddenly feeling a bit stupid.

“Oh,” he says, dropping his shin guard. “Well…”

“Are you offering to undress me?” Gideon asks.

There’s nothing Din can say to that. He turns away to remove his codpiece and hide the sudden rush of heat to his cheeks — a heat that has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to undress Gideon, or that unfair comment earlier about groping him in the hall, or the way Gideon keeps studying him. His blush is wholly caused by Gideon’s lack of shame. And dignity. And decency. And—

And the blush just keeps getting worse, for some reason. Din abandons his codpiece on the floor and walks sideways to turn off the light, keeping his back to Gideon the whole time.

“I wasn’t peeking,” Gideon protests. “Trust me, I’ve no interest in whatever you’re hiding under that ridiculous piece of compensation armor.”

Just for that, Din chucks his arm guard at Gideon, and even in the dark, his aim is true; he knows by the sound of impact and the quick, cut-off bark of surprise. He half-expects Gideon to just amp up his antagonism even more, but there are no more comments from his side of the bed as Din finishes undressing. The atmosphere is, for a moment, so informal and comfortable that Din feels an uneasy sensation, like a million insect feet creeping up his spine. 

Then he gets into bed and the single dad/creepy-guy-who-kidnapped-his-kid tension comes skyrocketing back. His arm brushes Gideon’s, and even though he jerks away at once, he still feels Gideon shifting in bed, turning to look at him.

“Don’t start,” says Din, his voice flat.

Gideon seems to consider and then dismiss the option of not starting in less than a second. “Is this what you wear every day?” he asks. “What is this undersuit made of, burlap and Wookiee fur?”

“Go to sleep,” Din responds. “Some of us have work in the morning.”

Gideon scoffs at that, as if what Din does for a living doesn’t qualify as ‘work’ in his eyes. Still, he settles down, his arm brushing Din’s again — and his thigh ever-so-slightly touching Din’s thigh — and their hips bumping against each other.

It’s fine. It’s unavoidable. It doesn’t mean anything.

~~How many years has it been since Din got laid?~~

That’s a line of thought he doesn’t want to go down, because even if he were very desperate for sex, Moff Gideon wouldn’t stand a chance. And to take things further, even if Moff Gideon weren’t an Imperial (and an evil child-stealing bastard), he wouldn’t be Din’s type. If Din walked past him on the street, he wouldn’t look twice.

~~At the aristocratic planes of Gideon’s face. At the sardonic arch of his eyebrows or arrogant, compelling gleam in his eyes. At his figure, fit and imposing.~~

~~At his mustache, which isn’t _that_ much nicer than Din’s~~. 

Doesn’t matter. _So_ not his type. And besides — Din perks up at this thought — he probably isn’t _Gideon’s_ type either, so there’s no real danger of—

“Are you playing footsie with me?” Gideon asks.

Din jerks his foot away. “No.”

An ominous silence fills the room. Gideon’s suspicion is so thick in the air that when Din licks his lips, he can practically taste skepticism on his tongue.

“Okay…” says Gideon eventually. “Because if you _do_ intend to start something, I must insist you remove these cuffs.”

“I’m not starting something,” Din says. He folds his hands over his stomach, hyper-aware of Gideon’s presence at his side. He rankles at the implication in Gideon’s statement; he’s not a monster (unlike some people in this bed). He would never take advantage of a cuffed man.

Never use the maglock to secure Gideon’s hands to the head to the bed. Or cover his mouth with one hand while he tears open that ridiculous Darth Vader costume with the other. That sort of thing just isn’t in Din’s personality; he can’t imagine himself holding Gideon down, pressing his face into the mattress until he fears he might suffocate and goes limp underneath Din, acquiescing, letting him do whatever he wants. He can’t imagine how that might sound — how long Gideon might keep up his sarcasm before real fear started to creep in, and real desire too — how long it might take before he dropped the facade and started to beg: No, please, more—

And all the while, Din’s hands on Gideon’s hips, pulling them closer together. His lips on Gideon’s skin, trailing kisses down the hard planes of his back, digging his teeth into Gideon’s neck. The heat, the friction, the push and pull of their bodies together, and Gideon squirming underneath him, unsure whether he wants to get away from Din or lean into the touch—

Din clears his throat, his cheeks hot. Like he said, he can’t imagine it. He glances sideways at Gideon and catches him with his eyes closed, his face relaxed and somehow still retaining a faint expression of condescension.

“You’re staring again,” Gideon murmurs, his eyes still closed.

Blushing even harder, Din looks away. 


End file.
